THERE
ARE TWO CURRENT TRENDS IN THE RECORDING
WORLD THAT CAN SERIOUSLY DEGRADE THE SOUND
QUALITY OF YOUR MUSIC!

I hope
to give you a lot of tips & tricks that can help you
during the recording and
mixdown process. But before we go any further you should
be aware of two
alarming trends in the grassroots recording world that is
seriously degrading
the sound of many potentially good recordings.

The
first trend is the increasingly common practice of the
recording engineer
applying mastering processing during the mixdown, or mastering
the project
himself using plug-ins in a shoddy workstation.

THE RECORDING ENGINEER SHOULD NOT BE CONCERNED WITH
THE VOLUME OF THE MIX WHEN COMPARED HEADS UP TO CD'S!That is one
of the issues to be addressed by the mastering engineer.
If the
mix is to be compared heads-up to production CD's for reference
during the
mixdown , the volume of the CD should be lowered to match
the playback
volume of the mix. The mix should NOT be jammed through
compressors,
limiters and eq's in order to make it as loud (or louder)
than the CD. This is not to say that the engineer should
not compress or eq the mix at all. Most good engineers have
learned that a touch of compression (.5 or 1dB of gain change)
or a little eq can help bring a mix together. But it is
the abuse of these processors that is causing the problem.
And, if the compressor and/or eq is not of the highest quality,
you are ruining the audio quality of your mix. If you record
on great gear using great mics, and then run the mix through
a cheap compressor, the whole thing now sounds like the
cheap compressor. It's the old weakest link theory in spades.

There are two
major culprits to blame this trend on - one is the TC Electronic
"Finalizer", and the other is the Waves L-1 Ultra-Maximizer
and other such
plug-ins for ProTools and that ilk.

TC Electronic
is a fabulous manufacturer. D.E.S. uses their System
6000 Digital
Mainframe with the MD-3 mastering software as one
of our main mastering
processors. Even though the Finalizer appears to be the
mastering functions of the S6000 in a dedicated box, this
is NOT THE CASE. The Finalizer does not
exhibit the resolution, nor does it offer all of the fine-tuning
features of theS6000 that are essential for proper mastering. Plus
the eq on the Finalizer is downright terrible.

To compound
the problem, the proliferation of cheap computer-based
workstations means that almost every studio now has a "Mastering
Room".
This means that not only will your sound quality be degraded
by low resolution
and unstable clocks in the workstation, but the use of the
many "plug-ins" such
as the Waves L-1 or L2 Ultra-Maximizer means the signal
can be trashed
beyond any hope of recovery if it is not used very carefully.

If sound quality
is important to youDO NOT ALLOW ANYONE TO LOAD
YOUR MATERIAL INTO ANY WORKSTATION!The Sonic
Solutions SSHD
Mastering System as featured at Digital Editing Services
is the finest and
sonically purest workstation in the industry. In order to
get the best sound
possible, our mastering engineer should be working from
the ORIGINAL
MASTERr sound files or DATs that have not been subjected
to any additional processing or digital copying! See our
Tips & Tricks
page for more details.

It
is wonderful that technology is allowing processors to become
more
affordable, but there are certain tools that are dangerous
in the hands of the
inexperienced. Just because a person is a good (or excellent)
recording
engineer, that does NOT qualify him or her as a mastering
engineer!

Even
worse, you are now seeing people who have never engineered
a session, and have no knowledge of music, but they buy
a cheap computer, a sound card, some plug ins and a CD burner
and 'viola!', they're a mastering engineer.

Processors such
as the Finalizer and low-resolution workstations with their
plug-ins do have a place; so called project, or demo, mastering.
That is to
say, if the music is not for critical application - a demo
for example, then
it will 'potentially' be better if it is mastered even through
substandard gear.
But only 'potentially', because over- processing will trash
the sound. Just a dB
or so of compression or limiting can help 'punch up' the
sound. But not if the
material is to be commercially released on CD or a higher
resolution medium.
Then the mastering job should only be performed by a qualified
mastering
engineer through gear of the highest caliber. Both of which
you will find at
Digital Editing Services.

THE
SECOND ALARMING TREND

Updated
9/27/01

Although
CD and digital technology has fostered many wonderful improvements
in our recordings, it has also spawned a trend that is absolutely
trashing the sound quality of many potentially great sounding
albums. And that is the current trend of LOUD, LOUD and
LOUDER.

In
many ways this is an offshoot of the "first alarming
trend" as described above; mastering being performed
by unqualified people. The human ear can be very easily
fooled, and differences in "perceived loudness"
is one thing that can most easily confuse our ear/brain
mechanism.

Here
are some interesting facts about what we hear versus what
our brain actually interprets. (For more information do
a web search on "psychoacoustics".) First of all,
if given a choice between two altered versions of the same
sound, we will almost always choose the louder one as the
better sound. It's just a fact in the complex way that our
ears work.

So,
if a mastering engineer is compressing and limiting your
music so that it is eventually 6 to 9dB louder than the
original, and then he does an A/B comparison for you, you
are going to say that the louder version sounds better.
It will appear to be clearer, punchier and brighter.

The
reason for this is quite surprising. Our ears (or our brain,
rather) adjusts it's own internal equalizer depending on
the volume of what we are hearing! (For more information,
search out info on the "Fletcher-Munson Curve".)
At low volumes, we lose our sensitivity in the lowest and
highest frequencies, so the sound appears midrange heavy.
As you increase the playback volume, the music appears to
also increase in bass and treble content. At approximately
80 to 85 dB spl, we hear the signal as it truly is. (That
is why 85 dB spl is considered the ideal monitoring volume
for mixing and mastering.) As the volume increase above
this, our hearing mechanism actually boosts the bottom and
top end! So at loud volumes, we hear more bottom and top
end than there actually is.

So,
if you lower the output of the processed signal to match
the "perceived loudness" of the original signal,
then you will be able to hear the true difference. If the
music was properly mastered, it will be noticably improved
in clarity and punch. And it will almost always be from
3 to 9dB louder than the original. If the music has been
over or improperly procesed, what you will hear in the processed
version is a loss in clarity of the upper midrange, a brittle
harshness in the high frequencies and a myriad of trashy
artifacts in the quietest musical passages being caused
by the compression, especially if it is digital.

Even
with the very best mastering compressors and limiters, there
is no free ride in this regard. A good mastering engineer
using true master-quality gear can minimize the degradation
of the signal, but once you go beyond a certain point in
loudness, the signal will suffer in some ways. It's up to
you to decide if the trade off is worth it for the extra
few dB of level.

To
compound the problem, so much mastering is being done now
through sub-par equipment, whether it is the newest cheap
digital box, tube gizmo or workstation plug-in. And it is
often being performed by individuals who don't have the
experience necessary to operate the gear properly or to
be able to hear the problems they are creating.

So,
the trend toward louder and louder CD's is pretty much an
offshoot from this; the unqualified mastering engineer has
learned that all he has to do to impress the client is to
make the music louder. And by comparing it to the original
signal without compensating for playback volume, it appears
that a significant improvement has been made, when in fact
the sound quality has been degraded. And the client is even
more impressed when this mastering genius can actually make
it LOUDER than the loudest CD you can bring in for comparison.

The
result of an over-compressed/limited signal is what is called
the 'loud tiny sound'. It has really hot average level,
but listen to it at medium to low volumes, and it sounds
small and wimpy. In fact, this is precisely why Muzak sounds
the way it does. The Muzak signal is extremely compressed,
but surprisingly not as compressed as a lot of current release
music.

Now
I will get on the soap box. We have control of this ourselves.
Do not be drawn in by the seeming allure of loudness. It
is up to you as a musician/producer to say "enough".
Of course you want your CD to be competitive in volume when
it comes up on the changer or juke box, but resist the idea
of 'louder is better'.

Why
do I consider these two trends to be so alarming? Simply
this; we are right now ruining the sound quality of this
current era of popular music. When all of this wonderful
technology has made it possible for us to improve things,
instead we have abused it and are rapidly going backwards
in sound quality.

When
I first got into mastering, I used to think that the saddest
thing was that so much music outside of major releases went
unmastered. If it had just sounded right, it may have been
accepted. But these current trends are actually worse. The
reason is simple: If the original masters could be found
on the old, unmastered music, it could be properly mastered
now. But if a signal is over compressed, limited or eq'd,
the resultant loss in sound quality cannot be recovered!
And the problem is, this is often now being done during
the mixdown, so there is no unprocessed original master.

Potentially,
we are going to start fresh with beautiful new media in
DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD (SACD). With the surround-sound
capability of these discs, hopefully volume will not become
such an issue. Regardless, let's not allow it to become
an issue. Otherwise, 50 years from now people are going
to listen to this era of music and wonder what the hell
was wrong with our ears. Let's turn it around and make them
marvel at the great sounds we were capable of generating
way back in the early 2k's!!